What a piece of Shaq: "Blue Chips"

I'll admit my instincts aren't always right. In retrospect, I shouldn't have asked out Alison Levy, although I'm sure she really was sick when she canceled our date my senior year in college. (So sick she apparently had to go the hospital, since she wasn't home when I stopped by that night to see how she was doing.)

But in the case of "Blue Chips," I should have followed my gut. When the movie came out in 1994, I passed, thinking it didn't look like a "great sports movie" and hearing nothing that changed my mind. But when it popped up on an HD channel lately, I figured, "What the heck? Maybe it's not that bad."

It's not that bad, but it's not good, either. That's a shame, too, because there definitely is a good movie to be made in bigtime college basketball recruiting, corrupt boosters and the kids caught in the middle of it all.

"Blue Chips" gives us Nick Nolte as a legendary college hoops coach at the fictional Western University. Keep that in mind as the movie starts with Nolte's team facing another fictional school, Texas Western, coached by a real guy, Rick Pitino. The Texas Western squad also has real players going by their real names, i.e. Rex Walters, George Lynch, Chris Mills.

I wouldn't consider myself a cinema purist, but I had a real problem with this mix-and-match between real and fake teams/characters. To me, it should be all or none. Sure, it was distracting in "Any Given Sunday" when none of the teams were real NFL squads, but at least it was consistent.

"Blue Chips" gets even sillier when Western U. plays Indiana U. -- a real school that actually had its real coach, Bobby Knight, in the coach's role. They also had past Indiana players such as Keith Smart and Calbert Cheaney on the team, but then we get Bobby Hurley as a Hoosier. Bobby Hurley? Bobby Hurley? What the f*ck? Did you think nobody would notice this? Come on.

I'm not sure anything could have saved the movie from this stuff, but the script and characters don't help. This could have been a great role for Nolte, and he has his moments in the locker room. There's just not enough for him to work with as the successful coach who ultimately has to bend and break rules to keep winning. His internal conflict just doesn't come across well.

The supporting roles are even less developed. J.T. Walsh, great as he is, is silly as the big booster. Ed O'Neill's muckraking journalist is one-note and paper-thin. And while having real ballplayers makes for good on-court action, let's just say that as actors, they're good ballplayers. Penny Hardaway and Matt Nover are bland and wooden as two blue-chip prospects, while Shaquille O'Neal is amusing but nothing great. He just does the Shaq thing: "Hey, people, I may be a big dude, but I'm soft-spoken and thoughtful. Really. Now watch this dunk."

Like I said, it's too bad, because the subject matter is fertile for a gritty look at the darker side of basketball. You know, something like "Juwanna Mann," or maybe "Slam Dunk Ernest."